


Neighborhood 12358W Attempt #231

by flordecai



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Eleanor always figures out they are in the bad place, Multi, Other, Reboot #231, What happened during some of the reboots?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:21:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22873939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flordecai/pseuds/flordecai
Summary: Some where during one of the reboots, Michael starts the reboot in a way he thinks could finally work. He has set up Chidi and Tahani as soulmates while leaving Jason and Eleanor alone. The longer the reboot goes on, the more things start to break down. Chidi and Eleanor begin to fall in love, despite Chidi being Tahani's soulmate. This attempt is set to be rebooted, but just how will it go down?
Relationships: Chidi Anagonye/Eleanor Shellstrop, Jianyu Li | Jason Mendoza/Janet (The Good Place), Tahani Al-Jamil/Chidi Anagonye, Tahani Al-Jamil/Chidi Anagonye/Eleanor Shellstrop, Tahani Al-Jamil/Jianyu Li | Jason Mendoza
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	1. Michael

He smoothed out his suit jacket, the dark blue contrasting the baby blue shirt and plaid bowtie he wore underneath. Nerves always got to him in these small moments, especially with what was on the line. But this was going to be the end of the problems. This reboot would go well, he _knew_ it. After all, this time he had a secret- he had a white board in his apartment, with all his plans written out with an entire timeline established. If this went well and entirely according to his plan, this would be the _final_ reboot and Shawn wouldn't have to know what actually happened. Perfection.

"Okay, okay, here we go." Michael ran a tongue over the edge of his teeth, a habit he'd picked up centuries ago. Human teeth were so weird, there really was no use for them, what with there being no sharp edges and all.

A call came in as he was about to stand, swallowing a lump in his very human throat- another habit he'd picked up. It was Shawn, which normally would be an inconvenience had Michael not learned quickly. Turning around he hauled his white board out before flipping it to the "Attempt #2" side and pulling a piece of paper off, keeping it in hand as he waved his hand upwards to accept the call.

"Hey there boss, uh, look I need this to be brief- the... Residents could walk in any minute." Emphasis on _residents_ , imply that a human was nearby. "They have a scavenger hunt that's been getting out of control lately. The decisions of teams took Chidi three hours to decide that, perhaps, collective searching was a better idea- and then Eleanor wanted to compete alone for first place, which gave Chidi a stomach ache which had Tahani trying to comfort him, which made Jianyu jealous. Clusterfork of an event, really." Grin evilly, good, good, Shawn would buy this.

"Seems to be a rather... Intriguing situation." The tone meant he bought the garbage pile of a lie, Michael to rest easy now.

"So far, it's been working out." He repined the piece of paper, rubbing his jaw as he overlooked his work. "Anything you need from me, boss?"

"Your last status report came in late so I wanted to make sure things were running smoothly." Shawn adjusted his tie, a thin eye brow raised. "Despite all logic, it seems your experiment continues to surprise me." The call disconnected, leaving Michael with a white board of pretend plans and a stabbing sensation in his head. Pain head? Head pain? There was a word for it, but the specific word was evading him.

Pressing a hand to his jaw, Michael looked at the board before flipping it again, starting to go over this version's plan for one more time. The plan could work, it was different from the other versions. Instead of giving Eleanor a soulmate. No one to trust would continue her selfish behavior, causing suffering to any of the other humans who tried to help her. It could work, he didn't know why he didn't try this before. The rest of the plans could wait for another day, right now he needed to get Eleanor welcomed to the neighborhood. 

"Eleanor stays alone, so does Jason. Hopefully this time that dingus doesn't marry Janet-"

"Hi Michael." Janet had appeared next to him, smiling as she folded her hands in front of herself. This had been the 232nd time she'd been rebooted, and her outfit had changed to a pastel pink shirt with a cobalt blue vest and skirt, which oddly suited her. Instead of a ponytail, she had her hair down, the wavy brown locks settling on her shoulders in a perfect way that was beyond human capabilities.

"Ah, hi Janet. Is the neighborhood ready?" He fidgeted with his suit, tugging his sleeves down a bit more out of nerves.

"All set." She gave Michael a thumbs up. "All of the kabob restaurants are open and ready for duty!"

This time he'd gone with a food-on-a-stick theme for all the food places. It seemed to be a good, subtle way to torture the humans. Having all meals on a stick hopefully would get annoying eventually, after all, eating the food and not having it fall off at the wrong time was almost impossible. It was probably worse than frozen yogurt, at least the frozen yogurt was some what sweet and lived up to the expectation of sweet and delicious, depending on the combination of toppings and flavors. Food-on-a-stick had the expectation of delicious food that would be wasted by dropping onto the floor. The disappointment and frustration would get to them, but they all would never _dare_ to say anything, especially Eleanor. After all, part of their orientation would include a summary of saying these were in all of the good place neighborhoods, implying that this was the _perfect_ way of eating food. Openly complaining about the perfect food of basically heaven would be unthinkable for a human pretending that they belonged there. It was torture and would put the humans all in discomfort, even on their best days.

This reboot _had_ to work, or else it would be completely wasted.

"Alright, thanks Janet. Let's get this show on the road." Michael pushed the board back into the closet area, ensuring the door was locked. Attempt #200 was brief- maybe a week, two at best- because Eleanor discovered an unlocked closet of his office, finding the plans and, of course, figuring out that this was the bad place. Making sure it was taken care of, he went to the door to his office, opening the door and looking over at the blonde who sat on the vibrant white couch.

"Eleanor, come on in." He smiled, waving the woman into his office. Michael held the door open, hoping his attempt this time would be successful and he could be done with constantly rebooting the four humans. Really, by now it was getting absolutely depressing.


	2. Eleanor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleanor settles into the neighborhood for the 231st time. Welcome! Everything is fine.

_Sleeping in her bed during the weekend was the best part of living in her own apartment at sixteen. There was no box spring or bed frame, but the bed was nice and soft, paid for by her own money from working during the week after school. Some of the things in her room were from her mother's house, things like an Ikea dresser, a comforter for winter and a thin blanket for summer, which she was currently curled up in._

_Squirming in the warm blanket, she turned onto her back, her eyes still shut as she flexed her toes. It would be time to wake up soon, to do things like eat and clean her apartment before going for a night shift at work. But a few more minutes couldn't hurt anything, right? Just a few more-_

She blinked as she woke up, her eyes adjusting to the light in the room. There was a wide wall in front of her and stretched across the wall in vibrant green were the words _Welcome! Everything is fine_.For some reason, it didn't scare her. Normally, whenever she woke up somewhere and couldn't remember how she got there, fear should have been the natural reaction. But the words across the wall said everything was fine, so there was no reason to panic.

"Eleanor?" She turned to the man who called her name, returning his slow, easy going smile. "Come on in."

She followed him into the room, finding the place rather nice, reminding her of the time she snuck into a law office for a holiday party. She had never worked in such a gorgeous and expensive looking office, so she spent the entire night drunk as hell and wandering from room to room, trying to find the most expensive and small objects to steal. The carpet was the same beige color, the decor was different though, and was clearly on a first floor of some kind of building. Where was she?

As she followed the man in a bow tie, she saw a large desk, with a small chair in front of it. The older man sat behind the desk, so Eleanor took a seat in the white chair, folding a leg over her knee and smiling nervously at the other. 

"I bet you've got a bunch of questions for me." The man looked significantly older than her, but for some reason he didn't look like the creeper kind of old man.

"Yes, where are we? How did I get here? And who are you?" She made an effort to keep her tone cheerful and neutral, folding her hands over her knee.

"Wonderful way to start off. My name is Michael, I'm the architect." He ran a hand down the front of a linoleum file, thrumming his fingers as he took a deep breath. "You, Eleanor Shellstrop, are dead. Welcome to the good place, Eleanor."

That was a lot of information, but some how, it didn't phase her. It sort of made sense. That might be why she had originally thought she was back in her first apartment, but when she woke up here she wasn't afraid. Back on earth- wow, that thought was a bit too natural to be okay- she'd have been more upset and she'd probably be yelling by now.

"Oh, cool." Eleanor nodded, keeping herself still. If she was in the good place, that was good, right? Well, but she didn't feel like that was quite right.

"Really, it's an honor to have you in my neighborhood. I mean, look at your total point score." Michael waved his hand and a white screen, with thousands of words in the same vibrant green as the _Welcome! Everything is fine_ wall, appeared with her name floating above things like **_Spent 43,800+ hours with Red Cross in the Ukraine_ **and **_Save 1,029 orphans_.** This certainly had to be a mistake, Eleanor had never done these things.

"Oh how... nice."

"Its absolutely astounding, your life truly was an example to everyone on how to live a truly selfless life." He stood up, sliding the file into a cabinet before opening one of the glass doors and waving for her to follow him into the plaza that led out to a small market space full of what looked like kabob stores for various foods. Weird.

"Woa, what is this?"

"This is your neighborhood, Neighborhood #12358W, with 322 perfectly matched human souls, blended together in a blissful harmonic balance." He waved at a couple that walked by, holding hands and exchanging a quick kiss before walking away, giggling in a way that only couples do. It would have been sweet with any other person except for Eleanor. "In fact, our system is very exact in calculating the harmonic balance between every human soul, pairing the most compatible souls together as soulmates."

"Oh, cool, so everyone here has a soulmate?" She looked up as Michael paused, looking distressed.

"Well, no, see... The system is very exact, where it takes into account the human souls that have not yet lived on earth. So, in some rare cases, you could go a few hundred years without meeting your soulmate."

"So...." Eleanor looked down at her sneakers before looking around, fighting the urge to make a snarky comment about the couples.

"You don't have a soulmate yet, Eleanor, but that's only because your point total was so high. No person on earth reached a compatible level yet." He patted her shoulder, gently leading her towards a massive mansion of a house, that made Eleanor smile. Well, if she had to live a few hundred years without some one to bang, at least she could live in a giant house.

"That's fine, you know, I'm quite... Adjusted to the single life." Eleanor blinked when they stopped, looking at Michael who was grinning proudly at a rather small and oddly shaped and colored house. "Michael?"

"Oh, yes, yes, I think you will be perfectly fine. And, you'll have an entire house-" He waved at the cottage like house in front of them both. All of Eleanor's hopes fell. "Built in the Icelandic primitive style that you had wished to have while you lived on earth."

"Oh... I... See..." She laughed, the sound forced as she turned to the multi colored house. "So... Pleasant to finally experience that... Form of decor." 

"I am so thrilled that you like it." Michael sounded relieved, patting Eleanor's should for a second time before looking to his watch. "Good gracious, I need to be on my way. I have three more residents to help settle in. Janet-" The blonde let out a surprised yelp as a brunette woman appeared between Michael and herself.

"What the fork!"

"This is Janet-"

"Hi, I'm Janet."

"She can assist you in anyway you need while you're here in the good place. She has all the knowledge of the universe, so feel free to ask her anything." Michael waved as he began jogging back towards his office, leaving Eleanor in front of her new home alone with a robot lady.

"Well fork..." She sighed, frowning. "Why can't I say _fork?"_


End file.
